KDF is right about early mobilisation however that means nothing if the campaigns do not provide results.ChrisDR68 wrote:So do you envisage three campaigns to defeat the USSR?KDF33 wrote:I'd argue that the best course Germany could have adopted would have entailed to abandon the concept of a single, decisive campaign and to set in motion, already in the autumn of 1940, the plans for mobilizing the manpower and the industrial capacity to deploy greatly augmented field forces in the winter and spring of 1942. Then, a decisive second summer campaign could have been confidently envisaged, hopefully aimed at Moscow rather than the Caucasus.
Regards,
KDF
Possibly the first with the capture of Moscow as priority (looking at a map of Barbarossa Moscow doesn't look an enormous distance from the German start lines in June 1941) followed up by straightening the front line north and south of the Soviet capital.
Then the second campaign in 1942 aimed south with the capture of the Caucasus and north aimed at the capture of the Kola peninsular and ending with a general advance up to the Volga river in the centre.
If Hitler then thought he needed a final knockout blow against the Soviets (depending on the condition of both side's forces at the time) a third general offensive during 1943 aimed at reaching the Ural mountains could be attempted. There is a lot of evidence that these mountains were looked on by the Nazi's as a natural end point and defensive frontier to their eastern European ambitions.
You cannot simply lunge at Moscow without securing flanks first. You'll end up with an early Stalingrad in late summer - early autumn '41. My "insane post" tackles some problems Germans had to deal with first: securing flanks, pacifying the occupied territories, create dissent into Stalin followers, decredibilize the Soviet regime home and abroad, take into account religion (most Westerners don't know even today that Christian-Orthodox faith becomes a BIG issue in Eastern Europe and Russia if not taken into consideration), and so on.